Could Nadine Dorries defect to UKIP?

Five months after the Conservative whip was suspended from the MP for Bedfordshire, it has still not been restored.

Nadine Dorries was suspended from the Conservative Party after appearing on ITV's I’m A Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here!

UKIP looks likely to gain upwards of 100 seats today, but one thing Nigel Farage's party still lacks is an MP. As Raf suggested earlier, the party's best hope of changing this in the short-term is a defection from the Tories, so it's worth asking: could Nadine Dorries be the first recruit? More than five months after the Conservative whip was suspended following her stint in the jungle, it has still not been restored. A Tory source told me recently that the whips office was "keen to bring Dorries back into the fold" but that No. 10 remained resistant.

The MP for Bedfordshire has described UKIP's election success as "the day the political landscape significantly shifted" and has urged those "two arrogant posh boys" - David Cameron and George Osborne - to "reconnect with true Conservative values and work hard over the next two years to win back the core Tory vote".

If they want to avoid handing Farage the political gift of a defection, they might also want to consider reconnecting with Dorries.

Update: It's worth remembering, of course, that UKIP has had an MP before: Bob Spink, who defected from the Conservatives in 2008. He went on to lose Castle Point to the Tories in 2010.